Thursday, February 07, 2019

Before Wallis - Edward VIII's Other Women ~ Rachel Trethewey

First things first, I must now confess to a complete blank on the lineage of the House of Windsor.

What a disgrace.

Well, the early days of the House of Windsor that is, created in 1917 to break with any prior associations with Germany... but who exactly were the brothers and sisters, the children of King George V and Queen Mary?

I've sorted it out now but I can't believe I had never really paid attention and understood the place of Dukes of Gloucester and Kent in the grand Windsor scheme of things. To save anyone else the embarrassment, though I feel sure you all know this, here it is ...

The Major Players...

Prince Edward Albert Christian George Andrew Patrick David (known as David) born in 1894, the eldest son and heir to the throne. Edward VIII and the one who would abdicate.

Prince Albert Frederick Arthur George born in 1895, known as Bertie, second in line. The man who would be King George VI after the abdication.

The Minor Players...

Mary, the Princess Royal, born in 1897

Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester born in 1900.

Prince George, (how confusing) Duke of Kent born in 1902.

Prince John, born in 1905 and died in 1919. The 'afflicted' prince and the subject of that brilliant 2003 TV drama, The Lost Prince, by Stephen Poliakoff

Right, so having sorted that out, we can now proceed to Rachel Trethewey's latest and excellent book, Before Wallis - Edward VIII's Other Women.

From knowing so little beyond Wallis Simpson - divorcee - abdication - bad news, I now know it all thanks to Rachel Trethewey's meticulous but accessible research presented in this completely absorbing read.

At just 5ft 7ins tall and weighing nine stone the Prince must have cut an almost diminutive figure but the women of the land fell over themselves to be in the same room as him and he was never short of a mistress or three it would seem. Freda Dudley-Ward and Thelma Furness, along with the lovely Rosemary Leveson-Gower, are the three women whose lives Rachel Trethewey examines in detail and I was fascinated by each one.

But what a sad sort of jack-the-lad Edward was. In the words of his private secretary Tommy Lascelles, who knew him well...

'Edward was so isolated in the world of his own desires that he never felt ' absolute objective affection' for anyone, even his lovers or family.'

And me, well, I'm in the mood to blame the parents...

Childcare delegated to a nanny who cared obsessively (never taking a day off) for the young prince for the first three years of his life but was revealed to be a cruel and spiteful abuser. Covered in bruises it was discovered that the young prince was pinched mercilessly to make him cry whenever he was taken to see his parents so that he would seem to need his nanny. And who can know what else may have been inflicted on him at such a crucial stage in his life.

And then, when the one and first love of his life, Rosemary Leveson-Gower seems on the brink of accepting a marriage proposal, she is deemed unsuitable because of a taint of unsavoury behaviour and perhaps mental instability within her family (the Duke of Sutherland of Dunrobin Castle) and the King and Queen forbid the match.

Rosemary, a front-line nurse during the First World War. Level-headed and a stabilising influence on the wayward Prince, who can know how different his life might have been had the marriage been approved?

Rosemary would eventually marry Lord Ednam, but how tragic her ultimate demise. Jettisoned into an orchard in the village of Meopham in Kent in 1930 when the plane in which she was travelling home from France disintegrated in mid-air, her pearls poignantly strewn across the ground. Ironically Rosemary had been heading back for a meeting with the architect who was designing the memorial garden for her child Jeremy, who had been killed in a road accident . Reading of such tragedy stayed with me for days, along with all the what-might-have-beens of her life and ultimately the House of Windsor. Rosemary was buried alongside her son at the family home, Himley Hall in Dudley near Birmingham.

Now an events venue I wonder if anyone knows whether the graves are still there somewhere...

Freda, married but frequently conducting a troika of relationships at any one time and definitely the one holding the reins. She would become more of a counsellor and confidante to the Prince as the years progressed and marriage seemed increasingly unlikely, but would be dropped like a stone when Wallis came on the scene.

Thelma, perhaps the most superficial of the mistresses in the Prince's eyes, with limited intelligent conversation but clearly plenty of other desirable attributes. One half of the American Morgan twins, the other, Gloria, would become a Vanderbilt and therein probably exists another complete book.

I was so riveted I didn't take detailed notes, but the narrative ranges far and wide and fascinatingly across 1920's and 30's life for the upper echelons with plenty of intriguing connections of which I knew a little, but not, for example, of the Prince's involvement with the African Happy Valley set. The book's focus is not on Wallis Simpson or the abdication but on the years, the women, and the choices that led up to it and indeed sheds some light on the three women in their own right.

Highly recommended if like me you have a bit of a lacuna about all this, and for those who follow it all in every detail plenty more to discover.

Meanwhile, I wonder if there is still the appetite out there for reading around the Royals ...

I certainly wouldn’t have considered myself a fan of anything about them from the twentieth, or heaven forfend the twenty-first century so this has been a pleasant surprise, and now I hear mutterings of a good book about Queen Mary...what say you...

Comments

Before Wallis - Edward VIII's Other Women ~ Rachel Trethewey

First things first, I must now confess to a complete blank on the lineage of the House of Windsor.

What a disgrace.

Well, the early days of the House of Windsor that is, created in 1917 to break with any prior associations with Germany... but who exactly were the brothers and sisters, the children of King George V and Queen Mary?

I've sorted it out now but I can't believe I had never really paid attention and understood the place of Dukes of Gloucester and Kent in the grand Windsor scheme of things. To save anyone else the embarrassment, though I feel sure you all know this, here it is ...

The Major Players...

Prince Edward Albert Christian George Andrew Patrick David (known as David) born in 1894, the eldest son and heir to the throne. Edward VIII and the one who would abdicate.

Prince Albert Frederick Arthur George born in 1895, known as Bertie, second in line. The man who would be King George VI after the abdication.

The Minor Players...

Mary, the Princess Royal, born in 1897

Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester born in 1900.

Prince George, (how confusing) Duke of Kent born in 1902.

Prince John, born in 1905 and died in 1919. The 'afflicted' prince and the subject of that brilliant 2003 TV drama, The Lost Prince, by Stephen Poliakoff

Right, so having sorted that out, we can now proceed to Rachel Trethewey's latest and excellent book, Before Wallis - Edward VIII's Other Women.

From knowing so little beyond Wallis Simpson - divorcee - abdication - bad news, I now know it all thanks to Rachel Trethewey's meticulous but accessible research presented in this completely absorbing read.

At just 5ft 7ins tall and weighing nine stone the Prince must have cut an almost diminutive figure but the women of the land fell over themselves to be in the same room as him and he was never short of a mistress or three it would seem. Freda Dudley-Ward and Thelma Furness, along with the lovely Rosemary Leveson-Gower, are the three women whose lives Rachel Trethewey examines in detail and I was fascinated by each one.

But what a sad sort of jack-the-lad Edward was. In the words of his private secretary Tommy Lascelles, who knew him well...

'Edward was so isolated in the world of his own desires that he never felt ' absolute objective affection' for anyone, even his lovers or family.'

And me, well, I'm in the mood to blame the parents...

Childcare delegated to a nanny who cared obsessively (never taking a day off) for the young prince for the first three years of his life but was revealed to be a cruel and spiteful abuser. Covered in bruises it was discovered that the young prince was pinched mercilessly to make him cry whenever he was taken to see his parents so that he would seem to need his nanny. And who can know what else may have been inflicted on him at such a crucial stage in his life.

And then, when the one and first love of his life, Rosemary Leveson-Gower seems on the brink of accepting a marriage proposal, she is deemed unsuitable because of a taint of unsavoury behaviour and perhaps mental instability within her family (the Duke of Sutherland of Dunrobin Castle) and the King and Queen forbid the match.

Rosemary, a front-line nurse during the First World War. Level-headed and a stabilising influence on the wayward Prince, who can know how different his life might have been had the marriage been approved?

Rosemary would eventually marry Lord Ednam, but how tragic her ultimate demise. Jettisoned into an orchard in the village of Meopham in Kent in 1930 when the plane in which she was travelling home from France disintegrated in mid-air, her pearls poignantly strewn across the ground. Ironically Rosemary had been heading back for a meeting with the architect who was designing the memorial garden for her child Jeremy, who had been killed in a road accident . Reading of such tragedy stayed with me for days, along with all the what-might-have-beens of her life and ultimately the House of Windsor. Rosemary was buried alongside her son at the family home, Himley Hall in Dudley near Birmingham.

Now an events venue I wonder if anyone knows whether the graves are still there somewhere...

Freda, married but frequently conducting a troika of relationships at any one time and definitely the one holding the reins. She would become more of a counsellor and confidante to the Prince as the years progressed and marriage seemed increasingly unlikely, but would be dropped like a stone when Wallis came on the scene.

Thelma, perhaps the most superficial of the mistresses in the Prince's eyes, with limited intelligent conversation but clearly plenty of other desirable attributes. One half of the American Morgan twins, the other, Gloria, would become a Vanderbilt and therein probably exists another complete book.

I was so riveted I didn't take detailed notes, but the narrative ranges far and wide and fascinatingly across 1920's and 30's life for the upper echelons with plenty of intriguing connections of which I knew a little, but not, for example, of the Prince's involvement with the African Happy Valley set. The book's focus is not on Wallis Simpson or the abdication but on the years, the women, and the choices that led up to it and indeed sheds some light on the three women in their own right.

Highly recommended if like me you have a bit of a lacuna about all this, and for those who follow it all in every detail plenty more to discover.

Meanwhile, I wonder if there is still the appetite out there for reading around the Royals ...

I certainly wouldn’t have considered myself a fan of anything about them from the twentieth, or heaven forfend the twenty-first century so this has been a pleasant surprise, and now I hear mutterings of a good book about Queen Mary...what say you...

Constants...

Team Tolstoy

Team TolstoyA year-long shared read of War & Peace through the centenary year of Count Lyev Nikolayevich Tolstoy's death, starting on his birthday, September 9th 2010.
Everyone is welcome to board the troika and read along, meeting here on the 9th of every month to chat in comments about the book.

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An aide memoire that can be niftily printed and laminated into a double-sided bookmark.

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